Long Presentations

This paper describes the design, implementation and evaluation of a
multiplayer mobile game that enhances the remote fans experience during a live
sports event broadcast. This prototype, called WeApplaud, encourages users to
participate in the applause happening in the stadium, increasing their levels
of fun and immersion in the live event. To achieve these goals, we explored the
use of persuasive technology, together with the second screen concept, in order
to create a motivating and innovative experience for the users. To test the
WeApplaud concept, guide the system's design and evaluate users reactions, we
conducted preliminary user tests. Results helped to validate our approach, but
also identified some important refinements to be considered in future
developments.

E-books, which have become increasingly popular, potentially offer users
attractive and entertaining interaction beyond paper-based books. However, they
have lost physical features such as paper-like texture and page-flipping
sensation. We focus on flipbooks and propose a novel book-shaped device for
flipbooks called Paranga that embodies both these physical features and e-book
interactivity. Paranga detects how quickly a user is turning pages and provides
the tactile feedback of turning pages on his/her thumb by employing a rotatable
roller mechanism with pieces of real paper. Using this device, we created
several interactive flipbook applications in which the story changes depending
on page-turning speed. This paper details the implementation of this device,
describes the users' reactions at a conference exhibition, and discusses
Paranga's possible applications.

Brushing teeth is a daily habit to maintain oral hygiene, including the
maintenance of oral cleanliness and prevention of caries and periodontal
disease. However, tooth brushing is often not carried out correctly or
forgotten because the task is boring. Although several works have contributed
to improving brushing performance and motivation, the feedback seems to be very
remote from the brushing itself, i.e., not intuitive. In this study, we
establish two objectives to deal with these issues. The first is not to present
information on a visual display, but to augment the ordinary tooth brushing
experience consisting of haptic and auditory sensations, while the other is to
design the modulation so that users feel as if their teeth are gradually
becoming cleaner, thereby providing the necessary motivation. To achieve these
aims, we propose a novel approach to augment the tooth brushing experience by
modulating the brushing sounds to make tooth brushing entertaining in an
intuitive manner. A microphone embedded in the toothbrush records the brushing
sounds, which are presented to users after being modified by a PC. In the
experiment, we demonstrate that increasing the sound gain and manipulating the
frequency can control the overall impression of brushing by giving a sense of
comfort and accomplishment.

Keywords: Augmented reality; sound effect; tooth brushing

Bathcratch: Touch and Sound-Based DJ Controller Implemented on a Bathtub

Bathcratch is a music entertainment system that converts a bathtub into a DJ
controller, allowing an average person in a bathtub to play scratching music.
The system detects the squeaks made by rubbing the bathtub and associates them
with several preset scratching phrases. In addition, capacitive touch sensors
embedded in the tub allow the selection of scratching phrases and background
rhythm tracks. Here, we provide a system overview and explain the design, user
interface, music controller implementation of this system along with the
feedback received for it during a public exhibition.

Drum kits consist of various kinds of percussion instruments. As all
percussion instruments are large and heavy, they are inconvenient for drummers
to carry and set up. Virtual drums, which include motion sensors and enable
drummers to imitate playing drums by stroking a virtual drum, are highly
portable. However, drummers, who are used to playing real drums, have
difficulty in demonstrating their drum skills with virtual drums because of the
lack of feedback from stroking, low sound quality, and so on. Our proposed
Airstic Drum achieves high portability and performance quality by integrating
real and virtual drums. Airstic Drum can distinguish the stroking of virtual
drums from the stroking of real drums, and it outputs digital sound only when
the drummer strokes virtual drums. We have developed a prototype system and
evaluated its effectiveness by actual use.

In this article we present a system that enhances content in platform game
levels. This is achieved by adding particular gaming entities and adjusting
their arrangement, causing consequent changes in the inherent difficulty and in
path related aspects. This idea follows our prior work for the automatic
creation of level environments. Starting with a primal level structure and a
corresponding graph that sketches the user path, the system detects mandatory
and optional path sections and adapts them in order to create more elaborate
challenges to the user, forcing detours to gather specific objects or trigger
certain events. Alternatively, a designer can create that base level structure
and use the algorithm to adapt it to a certain profile. Also, some adjustments
can be made to enhance multiplayer cooperative gaming for uneven skilled
players, where the path is adapted to force a difficult route to one player and
an easier one for the other player. Our experiments showed interesting results
on some popular games, where it is possible to observe the previous principles
put into practise. The approach is generic and can be expanded to other similar
games.

Stuffed suits have been widely used at various events. However, performances
with stuffed suits present two main difficulties in that performers are not
aware of their postures because of the difference in the shape and size of the
stuffed suits and the physical human body, and it is difficult for them to
communicate smoothly with others because of limited visibility. These problems
lead performers to train excessively to acquire a high degree of skill in
performances. The main goal of our study was to construct a system to support
performers in stuffed suits, which would enable them to act like the characters
they represented. From the results we obtained from evaluating our prototype
system, we confirmed that our method could effectively support performers in
stuffed suits.

The real challenge of creating believable and enjoyable board game
artificial opponents lies no longer in analysing millions of moves per minute.
Instead, it lies in creating opponents that are socially aware of their
surroundings and that can interact socially with other players. In traditional
board games, where face-to-face interactions, social actions and strategic
reasoning are important components of the game, artificial opponents are still
difficult to design. In this paper, we present an initial effort towards the
design of board game opponents that are perceived as socially present and can
socially interact with several human players. To accomplish this, we begin by
an overview of board game artificial opponents. Then we describe design
guidelines for developing empirically inspired social opponents for board
games. These guidelines will be illustrated by concrete examples in a scenario
where a digital table is used as a user interface, and an intelligent social
robot plays Risk against three human opponents.

Keywords: Social Presence; Board Games; Artificial Opponents

Localizing Global Game Jam: Designing Game Development for Collaborative
Learning in the Social Context

Making digital games can help people learn collaboratively. Recent advances
in game education allow for experimental game development in a short time
period with low cost. To examine the possibilities of game development and
learning, we focus on the recent "game jam" approach in collaborative game
development. The concept of game jam becomes well-known these days, however,
its historical development, goals, and strategies have not yet been explored.
To bring game jam into the education and learning, we first look at its
historical development and key concept referencing Global Game Jam, the biggest
annual game jam in the world, and then we discuss the recent case of
"localized" Global Game Jam-style events embedded in the social context of a
specific region.

Producing while Consuming: Social Interaction around Photos Shared within
Private Group

User-generated content plays a pivotal role in the current social media. The
main focus, however, has been on the explicitly generated user content such as
photos, videos and status updates on different social networking sites. In this
paper, we explore the potential of implicitly generated user content, based on
users' online consumption behaviors. It is technically feasible to record
users' consumption behaviors on mobile devices and share that with relevant
people. Mobile devices with such capabilities could enrich social interactions
around the consumed content, but it may also threaten users' privacy. To
understand the potentials of this design direction we created and evaluated a
low-fidelity prototype intended for photo sharing within private groups. Our
prototype incorporates two design concepts, namely, FingerPrint and MoodPhotos
that leverage users' consumption history and emotional responses. In this
paper, we report user values and user acceptance of this prototype from three
participatory design workshops.

Short Presentations

Most standard scene description languages include a sound description and
factorize common elements needed by the description of visual and auditory
information. Both aspects are described with the same coordinate system for
example. However, as soon as a dynamic description or external data are
required, this benefit is lost and all the glue must be done by a programming
solution that does not fit designers or authors usual skills. In this paper we
address this problem and propose a solution to give back to designers the
bigger role even when the scene is dynamic or based on procedural synthesizers.
This solution is based on the COLLADA file format in which we have added sound
support, scripting capabilities and external extensions. The use of this
augmented COLLADA language is illustrated through the creation of a dynamic
urban soundscape.

In this paper, we propose an automatic race track generating system based on
difficulty evaluation and feature turns detection for providing users
skill-matched contents. Given a start point, a goal point, and a difficulty
expectation chart, our system ranks all candidate race tracks according to the
similarity with respect to the given difficulty curve. Then, user can choose a
satisfied track and export it into a racing car simulator to play.
The system automatically creates the racing line for the input race track.
Then, the line is used to segment turns in the race track, and the
corresponding ideal maximum speed variation is exploited to evaluate the
difficulty by our proposed Turnscore formula. Also, the corresponding curvature
chart of the racing line is encoded as a string and the characterized regular
expression for feature turns is being matched in the string for identifying
feature turns.
As the experimental results show, the feature turns detection is of high
accuracy and the difficulty evaluation is reliable so that our system is
effective to provide skill-matched race tracks for users.

In this paper we present Light Perfume, a wearable system that helps the
users and their communication partner to mirror their nonverbal communication
cues together using factors such as speed of blinking and color in lights and
subtle perfume emission from a wearable accessory during a face-to-face
conversation. This is based on the concept of mirroring, whereby each user is
stimulated with the same visual and olfactory outputs to strengthen a user's
psychological bond with the partner using the accessory. We initially explain
the motivation and design of the prototype for the Light Perfume system. We
evaluate the system using a semantic differential method and show how the
system can be used to affect the impression formed of the user by others and
explore the potential usage of the entertainment accessory.

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games, such as World of Warcraft,
have become very popular in recent years. These types of games often provide
the player with a wide range of game abilities, weapons, tools, options, stats,
etc. which grow in number as the player progresses through the game. This in
turn makes the user interface of the game more complex and difficult to
interact with. Games such as World of Warcraft attempt to combat this by
providing mechanisms (e.g. add-ons) for interface customization by the player.
However, it is unclear which aspects of the game interface players prefer to
customize, or what effects those customizations have on their gameplay
experience. In this paper we present a survey of World of Warcraft players to
identify their opinions on game interface customization preferences. The
results of this survey are likely to apply to other massively multiplayer
online role-playing games.

This paper presents an innovative advergame installation for promoting the
brand and products of a company producing Cretan rusks. The paper first
presents some background and related work. Then, the requirements set towards
creating the game are outlined, followed by concept creation and design
decisions taken to meet these requirements, as well as a description of the
user interface, gameplay and technical characteristics of the resulting game.
The game has been installed with remarkable success in two different food
exhibitions in key locations in Athens, Greece, where it has been played by
more than 500 people of ages ranging from 2 to 76 years old. A large variety of
qualitative and quantitative data were collected. The paper presents several
findings stemming from these data. Additionally, changes made to the game as a
result of the findings are presented, along with lessons learnt from the
acquired experience.

This paper discusses design issues in the development of playful outdoor
interactive installations featuring kinesthetic interaction and immersive music
experiences. The research is based on the development and evaluation of the
novel SwingScape installation, which is a permanent installation at an urban
playground. The objectives of SwingScape are to encourage physical activity as
well as creating a playful and social experience in an urban space. The
interaction techniques include movement sensors built into swings, LED lights,
and an ambient loudspeaker system covering approx. 180 square meters. The
design issues include: creating playful and collective interaction, making a
familiar swing interaction simulate the experience of a music mixing board,
providing gentle integration of multimedia (light and sound) in the atmosphere
of an urban space, and finally making installations robust and safe for an
urban outdoor setting. The SwingScape installation has been developed in three
phases for quite different urban settings, and the experiences from these are
generalised to contribute to a foundation for design of interactive urban
installations.

We have a lot of literature on the static media but few on interactive ones.
Many doubt [Costikyan, Juul...] that it is possible to use stylistic devices
such as the ones that have pervaded the history of the 'one-way' storytelling.
We have tried to imagine what it would be to have a flashback in IS. Stylistic
devices, in classic media are not as immersive. They are immediately filtered
by language -- especially books -- while IS has the major flaw of being
sometimes incapable of telling a story by itself as it relies so much on
intuition. The existence of the flashback in IS is possible to the condition of
the narrative device called Uchronia, which leaves a chance of occurrence to
potential futures that might have happened. The last part is made for designers
who want to try to build Flashback IS application while taking back up on this
paper. We have taken a lot of inspiration from movies, classics as well as
modern and we have tried to set up a blueprint for an outline of a stylistic
grammar in IS, starting with the device of flashback.
On the one hand we have decided to use the theory of language as it is the
material of imagination -- the one that makes stories -- to try to find out if
flashback was compatible with emergence and game engineering. On the other
hand, we wanted to provide the basis for experimentation of interactive
flashbacks -- as we have tried to demonstrate exists under certain conditions
-- and we hope for other multimedia and stylistic devices in IS.

Imagine being able to approach any object in the real world and instantly
learn how to read and pronounce the name of the object in any other language.
This paper proposes the use of a system that simulates this idea by utilizing
the video game medium in a way that makes learning a new language simple and
fun. The system was designed specifically for the new technologically-inclined
generation that might benefit greatly from learning within a game environment.
The process of learning a new language with this system strays from previous
and conventional methods in that it employs a more visual-spatial approach to
learning. Additionally, this system engages the player through the use of
industry-standard video game elements such as a 3D environment, controllable
main character, item collection system, scoring system, and complex rewards
system. By keeping in line with what people expect from standard video games,
this game is capable of holding the player's attention for longer periods of
time than when compared classes, textbooks, or tutors.

This study addresses information support for hearing impaired people who
attend theatrical performances. In present Japan, there are a few theaters that
employ programs providing captions for hearing impaired people. The few
programs that provide captions only show dialogues and sounds (musical note
icons). We propose, implement, and evaluate a caption presentation method for
hearing impaired people, which includes support for dialogues, sound effects,
and audience responses.

We developed a simulation model and generated a gait pattern for quadruped
artificial life. The model is based on three dimensional physical simulation
using a physics engine. Neural networks are used to control each leg, and the
genetic algorithm is used to evolve the gait. The generated gait pattern is
similar to the gait called "walk" in real-world animals. An analysis is
conducted of the developing gait pattern, in addition to the final result. The
emergent walk-like gait is similar to a newborn baby crawling on the floor, and
it would appear that the artificial life struggles to go straight ahead on the
midway of evolution.

Tremendous amount of images are used on modern Web pages, but images are
rarely used in everyday communication via e-mail, SMS, SNS, etc., although many
communication systems allow the use of images in the message. We believe that
images can greatly enhance the quality of communication if they are
appropriately used with alphabetical texts, and we created a text input system
with which users can handle images on HTML editors and word processors just
like they can handle words in East-Asian languages. In this paper, we show how
images are useful in everyday communication, and show how we can handle images
with existing popular dictionary-based text input systems for East-Asian
languages. Images are not only useful for rich communication, but they are fun
to use and useful for conveying emotions.

A container for cargo use travels various countries with a lot of kinds of
goods. It arrives at a place with some goods, and then it leaves to a different
place with different goods. A container itself is a kind of transportation in
the viewpoint from goods. We imagined if the goods were we, a container would
be a train. We have proposed a new experience-based artwork using a container
to resemble to a train, named Train Window of Container. In this paper, we
discuss the system implemented in a container that provides us to feel a sense
as if we were in a train. When you enter the container, you can see various
kinds of scenes through train windows and can also hear a sound of train
movement. You can see scenes of Japan, Korea, France, and so on. Inside of the
container is dark which provides you a new sense of moving with visual and
auditory information. For the implementation of the artwork, we used 10
displays as windows of train and 10 speakers for the sound, and showed video of
landscapes. We exhibited the artwork for five days and had about 13,000
audiences.

We devised a new user interface that relates applications running on
multiple mobile devices when the surfaces of juxtaposed screens are merely
pinched. The multiple-screen layout can be changed dynamically and instantly
even while applications are running in each device. This interface can
introduce a new kind of interaction: rearrangement of devices triggers a
certain reaction of contents. We expect this interface to show great potential
to inspire various application designs, and we expect to enrich the contents by
offering interaction that a single display or a static multi-display
environment cannot provide. To prove and demonstrate that the interface is
functional, we implemented a framework for using the interface and developed
several applications using it. Although these applications are simple
prototypes, they received favorable responses from audiences at several
exhibitions.

Social network games in Facebook are played by millions of players on daily
basis. Due to their design characteristics, new challenges for game design and
playability evaluations arise. We present a study where 18 novice inspectors
evaluated a social game using playability heuristics. The objective is to
explore possible domain-specific playability problems and to examine how the
established heuristics suit for evaluating social games. The results from this
study show that some implementations of the social games design characteristics
can cause playability problems and that the established heuristics are suitable
for evaluating social games. The study also revealed that inspectors had
problems in interpreting cause and effect of the found problems.

Decreasing the energy consumption is an important goal for environmental
sustainability. This paper describes MAID (Motion-based Ambient Interactive
Display), an interactive public ambient display system, driven to motivate
behavior changes regarding domestic energy consumption, through a persuasive
game interface based on gesture recognition technology. The developed prototype
guides players through the different rooms of a house, where they have to find
out what is wrong and practice the correct actions to save energy, using
similar gestures to the ones they would use in the real world to achieve the
same goals. The system provides feedback regarding the consequences of each
action. The paper also describes and presents the results of a user evaluation
study performed during an open day event, attended by 6000 high school
students, at our University Campus.

This paper presents a form of interaction with virtual characters. A virtual
character can play the role of a user's sidekick. Sidekicks interact with real
and fictional characters helping them to overcome challenges. UBI, the Guardian
Dragon, is a virtual sidekick that can help a user explore a space. UBI is part
of vuSpot. With vuSpot we aim to design and develop an infrastructure,
adaptable to a space that uses existing video cameras networks to provide means
for augmenting spaces and supporting interactive experiences. vuSpot has
several components, being the interaction with virtual characters one of the
most important. With this component we intend to explore new forms of
interaction using Augmented Reality and mobile devices. The interaction
consists of performing physical actions that are captured on video and are
recognized. The reaction of the characters to those actions is superimposed on
the video stream that the user will visualize on the mobile device. This
action-reaction environment allows a more interesting space exploration and
provides means for gaming.

Recently there have been many works of research and products which make use
of electronic and information technology to equip a piece of paper with
interactive functions. Examples include picture books which output animal
noises, and the use of electric circuits drawn on paper, in conductive ink, to
facilitate the output of light and sound. However, these technologies do not
have a function that enables customization of the output that is linked to an
input interface. The instrument's sound is composed of various kinds of tone
and pitch and the effect of a single note is different from that of chords and
melody. When users are designing a painted musical instrument they find out
problems with the instrument and then discuss and test the design using the
customize function, which selects and outputs the sound of the instrument.
Therefore, the goal of our study is to construct a prototyping support system
for painted musical instruments. By drawing shapes on the paper with conductive
ink users create input interfaces to which they can then assign different
sounds flexibly and intuitively.

Currently, many AR/MR researches and applications are based on visual
information presentation with narrow field of view HMD. For example, some AR/MR
systems navigate users by showing visual information signs or notification
messages as needed. However, these information presentations occlude user's
limited field of view with HMD and bother user's primary activities. In this
study, we proposed a novel approach to navigate users by using user's
inconscientious reflex motion with novel type of HMD. First, we construct
Head-mounted Vection Display (HMVD) to induce self-motion perception (Vection)
by presenting optical flow on peripheral vision. Next, we evaluate this effect
of induced self-motion perception by observing user's walking behaviour with
HMVD. The results indicate the proposed approach have possibility of automatic
navigation without user's awareness and recognition.

This research proposes a postcard that transforms into a paper craft model
after being heated by a microwave oven, named "POPAPY". POPAPY is made from a
combination of paper, heat shrink sheet, and very thin aluminum sheet. The
aluminum sheet can provide heat to the heat shrink sheet effectively, and the
heated heat shrink sheet will shrink and the paper will bend, then, the paper
model will stand. In this paper, POPAPY, along with an application that allows
the designing of the shape of the paper figure and a simulator of the
transformation are implemented. Users can make their own original POPAPY easily
using the application and the simulator helps to design the bending angle of
the figure by the combination of the size of the heat shrink sheet and the
aluminum sheet. "POPAPY" can provide a surprising feeling to the receiver as
well as amusement of sending a card to the sender.

Art and Culture Track

This paper presents Phase I development and Phase II enhancement of a Game
platform for inter-generation cultural communication. The first application is
demonstrated in a game called Confucius Chat which teaches family
responsibility in conjunction with Singapore's government policy. Phase I has
been tested with positive and encouraging acceptance from parents and children.
The purpose of Phase II development is to engage social media picture exchange
and to build database learning into the system for catering to younger
generations.

Water possesses an extraordinary expressive power, which has already been
extensively exploited in the arts and in common sense thinking. Water can evoke
deep feelings of purity, unity, and happiness, but also of dirt, drowning, and
despair. We have explored this expressive power for a theater play, with an
interactive simulation of water that was set into motion by the actor, and that
expressed the inner feelings of his soul. We have employed the Ogre game engine
for the simulation. We also believe that virtual reality technologies possess
yet uncovered expressive potentials, among others for creating "existential
games", which means games where only main existential vectors such as life,
beauty, death, love are represented.

Computer gaming has often represented a fertile ground for the
implementation and testing of novel and engaging human-computer interactions
systems. Such phenomenon has occurred first with mice and joysticks and keeps
on going, increasing in complexity and realism, with body-based interfaces
(e.g., Wii, Kinect). Now, many fields and applications could benefit from these
advances, starting with those where interactions, rather than physical objects,
play a key role. Relevant exemplars can be found within many specimen of
intangible cultural heritage (e.g., music, drama, skills, craft, etc.), whose
preservation is possible only thanks to those tradition bearers that patiently
bestow their knowledge upon new generations. Italian luxury crafts, which range
from sports cars to high-end clothing, for example, often obtain their high
quality and consequent reputation from a mix of intangible artistic and
technological skills. The preservation of such skills and the persistent
creation of such handcrafts has been possible, in time, thanks to those
"master-apprentice" relations that have retained the quality standards that
stand behind them. Nowadays such type of relations remain no longer easy to
implement, as creation and production paradigms have undergone radical changes
in the past two decades (i.e., globalization of production processes), making
the transfer and preservation of skills challenging. Inspired by the advances
made in human-computer interaction schemes for gaming, in this work we propose
a non-invasive encoding of artisans manual skills, which, based on a set of
vision algorithms, is able to capture and recognize the gestures performed by
one or both hands, without needing the use of any specific hardware but a
simple video camera. Our system has been tested on a real-world scenario: we
here present the preliminary results obtained when encoding the gestures
performed by an artisan while working at the creation of haute couture shoes.

This paper describes the two phase development of the digital art piece PURE
FLOW. The first deployment of this work was as a gallery based exhibit in which
digital noise sampled from the Global Positioning System was exposed as dynamic
sound and projected visual displays. The second piece extended these initial
themes onto a handheld platform (iPhone) whereby the user could continually
sample digital noise from positioning systems at their surrounding environment
and generate an audio and visual experience specifically created for their
immediate location. Aesthetic considerations are described along with
implementation details leading to general reflections relating to
collaborations between artists and technical specialists.

This paper proposes a piece of interactive art installation named the "Juke
Cylinder" to augment sound images through hand interaction and to metamorphose
hands into a musical instrument. To augment a sound image onto users' hands, we
used a parametric loudspeaker because it can localize a sound image on a
reflecting surface. When users interact with our system, they perceive that
their hands are metamorphosed into various musical instruments such as a
guitar, a piano, or a synthesizer. Users can control the pitches of the sounds
depending on their hand interactions such as with real musical instruments. In
a demonstration at a media art exhibition, this system provided visitors with
extraordinary sound experiences, and we received positive feedback from them.

We are developing Puppet Theater system which enables both the hearing
impaired and the normal hearing to enjoy a puppet show. This system projects
puppet's lines in balloon on the background. In addition, the system has a
function that presents branches of the story to audience and allows them to
select. We performed the system to elementary school pupils with hearing
impairment and found that the pupils enjoyed it. Effects of the function were
investigated with questionnaire. This paper describes the function and the
result of questionnaire.

Interactive technologies are being introduced into urban children's lives in
developing countries. It is critical that these children have an active voice
in the process of developing such technologies. Towards these aims we describe
the research goals, process and outcomes for an action research project. The
overarching goal of the research is to investigate and better understand how
edutainment-based interactive technologies might change or improve the lives of
urban Nepalese children, their families and their communities. In this paper,
we describe the preliminary phase of the research in which in which we design
and run a creative design workshop with Nepalese children.

This paper presents a solution to the growing problems connected with bad
driving specially with over-speeding. This paper outlines a persuasive mobile
solution 'DriveRS' that is designed to change the speeding behavior of male
novice drivers in a persuasive manner. The 'DriveRS' application targets both
weak and strong habit young male drivers between the age of 18 and 26 by giving
them various incentives to change their speeding behavior. Results show an
overall acceptance of the application, mainly due to its unique rewarding
mechanism, and its ability to demonstrate the actual speeding behavior with
major impact on safety, fuel cost and possible fines. Results also indicate
behavior change for weak habit users and attitude change for strong habit
users.

WeApplaud is a multiplayer mobile game that takes remote users to
participate in the applauses happening in a sport event venue, increasing their
levels of fun and immersion while remotely watching a live event. Through the
use of persuasive technology concepts, WeApplaud encourages fans to applaud
their favourite sports team during specific key moments of a match.

We present building blocks equipped with electronics for educational
purposes. The blocks have changeable colors, a simple LED screen, and a
mechanism for decentralized communication between blocks that touch each other.
Using these simple elements, we introduced functionality to implicitly support
the development of prenumerical skills of preschool children without detracting
from the primary value of the toys: building towers and structures of blocks.

Drive Mind is a unique electro-acoustic system, which offers an audience a
new sonic experience produced by the refraction of light. The main feature of
this system is to visualize abstract figures of sound using a ray of LED light
and to manipulate the system using acrylic objects. By this manipulation, the
system creates a refraction of light and attendant positional data. This
positional data is used to produce sound. The complexity of refraction of the
light and the frame rate of the camera cause subtle fluctuations and produce
distinctive sounds. The object is to enhance an audience's imagination by
enabling them to identify with the performer's action visually, and help
understanding of complex digital expression, using not only physical material
but also physical phenomena when operating the system. This system helps the
audience to become familiar with complex digital expression and experience the
new possibilities of sound art.

We present a framework that allows for simulating a cloud gaming
architecture with any DirectX-based video game. The gamer's screen is captured
and compressed as a video stream using the VP8 codec and sent over the network
using UDP. We use this framework to evaluate the influence of frame-rate and
encoding bit-rate on the Quality of Experience, as perceived by a panel of
human test subjects.

Keywords: Cloud gaming; Quality of Experience; Video coding; VP8

Autonomously Acquiring a Video Game Agent's Behavior: Letting Players Feel
Like Playing with a Human Player

Designing behavior patterns of video game agents (COM players) is a crucial
aspect of video game development. While various systems aiming to automatically
acquire behavior patterns has been proposed and some have successfully obtained
stronger patterns than human players, the obtained behavior patterns looks
mechanical. We present herein an autonomous acquisition of video game agent
behavior, which emulates the behavior of a human player. Instead of
implementing straightforward heuristics, the behavior is acquired using
Q-learning, a reinforcement learning, where, biological constraints are
imposed. In the experiments using Infinite Mario Bros., we observe that
behaviors that imply human behaviors are obtained by imposing sensory error,
perceptual and motion delay, and fatigue as biological constraints.

In our fast evolving, highly technological world, sometimes we don't spend
quality time cooking or eating together because our attention is split. How can
we find a way to bring fun back into the kitchen, re-engaging people with
cooking?
The aim of this research is to use Media Design to engage people with food
experiences by bringing fun into cooking and eating. Through the design and
implementation of a sound augmented kitchen prototype, we have attempted to
address this question.
Chop Chop is a sound augmented kitchen prototype system. It consists of very
simple commercially available hardware; A computer or mobile device,
headphones, a cutting board and knife. As a user performs a simple everyday
cooking task, chopping food, the sound is enhanced with filters and combo
events, allowing the user to experience the act of chopping in a novel and
exciting way.
Through demonstrations, surveys and user experience analysis, we have tested
our prototype and shown that using our Augmented Reality system in a kitchen
setting has no detriment over traditional tools and techniques, and enhances
user experience and positive affect.

We daily enjoy the visual effects of slow and fast motion content. Time
telescopic techniques are useful in scientific research and provide new
possibilities in art and entertainment. We suggest that tactile sensations can
also benefit from the effect of time telescopic replay because of knowledge
that we can generally recognize texture regardless of the stroking speed. We
confirmed which resembles the visual during slow motion in previous research.
In this paper, we report a new system design to measure and present tactile
phenomena accurately. We also describe some application ideas to enjoy
immersion in the time telescopic world.

This paper introduces a compact device for noncontact interaction. It can
push objects from a distance by utilizing focused ultrasound. The maximum
output force at the focal point is 16 mN. The position of the focal point can
be moved quickly and precisely. The device is small (19×19×5
cm³), light (0.6 kg), and compact so that one can pick it up with one hand
and install it at various places. This easy-to-use device would lead to a wide
variety of applications.

This paper describes Pillow Fight 2.0, a physical game made as a suggestion
on how to use technology to encourage physical human to human interaction in
entertainment.
Firstly the theoretical and social background and motivation for creating
the game is introduced. Then follows a presentation of the implemented
technological system and the final design. Hereafter comes an analysis of user
behavior observed during the implementation of the game along with
technological observations. Finally comes a brief description, evaluation and
reflection upon the observed interaction and possible solutions and suggestions
for the future development of the game are put presented.

For whole-body interaction for computer entertainment, I propose applying
electrical stimulations to tendons to create an illusory motion of the limbs so
that real motion becomes unnecessary. Strong vibrations to joints induce the
well-known kinesthetic illusion, but electrically inducing this illusion has
been rarely explored. An experiment is described showing that this illusion can
be generated by electrical stimulation of the tendon, and suggesting a role of
the Golgi tendon organ in the illusion.

Exploration-like sightseeing is wandering around an unfamiliar place, and is
a way of seeing sights and enjoying novel experiences that are not mentioned in
guidebooks. However, the fear of getting lost prevents tourists from engaging
in exploration-like sightseeing. Current navigation devices are capable of
providing effective routes to specific places, which is not compatible for this
mode of sightseeing. This is because tourists tend to focus on the recommended
route displayed on the device and follow it faithfully. This prevents tourists
from seeing surrounding sights. Here, we propose a new navigation method called
stravigation. Stravigation is a vibrotactile mobile navigation for the tourist
to be able to enjoy exploration-like sightseeing. We describe its basic concept
and the results of evaluation experiments. These results show that stravigation
is capable of guiding tourists to specific places correctly without the need to
watch navigation devices. Furthermore, the results also show that stravigation
enhances the sense of delight while wandering.

Earth Girl: The Natural Disaster Fighter is an edutainment digital game
featuring a girl who can save her family and friends from natural hazards. The
scenario and game play are inspired by the challenges faced by communities
living in the Asian regions prone to earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding and
volcano hazards. The Earth Girl game is meant to help players to gain a better
understanding of natural hazards through imaginative and fun game play. The
game was developed in English and translated to Indonesian, Japanese and
Chinese. It runs on any Flash-enabled browser and was user-tested in Southeast
Asia with positive results and feedback.

This paper provides an outline of the persuasive mobile application
'Krachtvoer' (In English: PowerFood) that encourages adolescents with moderate
overweight to eat more fruit and fewer snacks. The key features of this
solution are dynamic goal setting, personal reminders, progress monitoring,
social interaction and competition with friends. Results of the evaluation
indicate that the app enhances the user's attitude and self-efficacy towards
eating fruit and healthy food. In addition, social influences encourage users
to eat more fruit and less unhealthy snacks.

In this paper, we describe a concept of City Pulse, an urban public display
that helps people find going-out locations of their taste. Relying on mobile
context collected by going-out citizens, the display visualizes the immediate
situation in city locations. The sensors integrated into the citizens' mobile
phones gather data on people's motion, pulse, and sound around. Based on this
data, City Pulse display shows, for instance, how crowded and how loud the
locations are, which music is playing, whether people dance or drink. In
addition, users can request the display to highlight the places matching their
preferences, such as specific cuisine or music style. It also allows finding
locations where the user's friends are currently going out. We present design
and of City Pulse display, motivating the concept by the user study conducted
with 20 international participants.

Keywords: Public displays; context awareness; mobile context

Physiological Signals Based Fatigue Prediction Model for Motion Sensing
Games

We present a fatigue prediction model for motion sensing games, dependent on
the change of physiological signals including blood volume pulse, skin
conductance, respiration, skin temperature and electromyography (EMG). After
extracting a range of features followed by using sequential floating forward
selection (SFFS) to select features, support vector regression (SVR) was used
to construct our prediction model that can predict how long participants enter
fatigue states. The root mean square error (RMSE) and the relative root square
error (RRSE) of our model are respectively 198.36s and 0.51 for
subject-dependent, and 522.94s and 0.97 for subject-independent. The results
indicate each subject has individualized physiological pattern when they felt
fatigue.

This paper presents a creature-like tentacle robot, JECCO, which is inspired
by an imaginary artwork series. JECCO robot has five robotic tentacles and a
novel creature-like interaction mechanism. JECCO responds to a user's contact
gestures and provides to users a sense of a living creature. The tentacle
expression of JECCO robot provides a unique interaction style and impressive
experiences.

Text messages sometimes fail to communicate feelings appropriately and cause
flaming. To solve this problem, we propose a messaging tool, named
"Yusabutter," that conveys the sender's feeling through animated texts, i.e.,
kinetic typography. The sender can make texts move by shaking a handy terminal
with a builtin accelerometer. We have also implemented a Yusabutter server that
generates a Web page containing the animated message and posts the message
along with the URI of the page on Twitter. Experiments showed that the senders'
feeling attached to messages by shaking the terminal and the receivers' feeling
upon reading the messages were approximately equivalent. This result suggests
that the proposed method can convey feelings appropriately, easily, and
pleasingly.

This paper presents HomeTree a prototype of an art-inspired mobile
eco-feedback system. The system is implemented on a tablet PC and relies on a
non-intrusive energy-monitoring infrastructure to access consumption and power
event information. Our prototype addresses an important problem in
eco-feedback, which is the fact that users loose interest about their energy
consumption after a period of several weeks. To accomplish this HomeTree
implements a dual visualization strategy. Initially HomeTree presents users
with a screensaver that shows energy consumption mapped in a dynamic
illustration of the local forest. Through this strategy we leverage the
emotional connection between the short-term energy consumption and the
long-term effects on nature through the local depicted landscape. In a second
mode of operation users can interact with HomeTree directly by checking the
historical records of their consumption data, and check which days or weeks
they have reduced or increased consumption. Furthermore a comparison with a
more objective baseline, such as the city of Funchal energy consumption is
provided, in order to give users a sense of the level of their consumption in a
wider context.

A significant part of the population is still not aware of the
sustainability problems that our planet is facing, so it is important to inform
people about the theme while persuading them to change their behavior and
acquire pro-environmental attitudes. This work intends to alert citizens to
these issues in a fun and immersive way through the use of mobile devices, more
specifically smartphones, and augmented reality technology which will provide
the user with informative insight about the surrounding environment, while
highlighting the environmental threats. This paper presents a system that works
like an environmental scanner, allowing users to inspect their surroundings
with their mobile devices in search of pollution sources. When detected the
system provides users with additional information and allows them to virtually
clean these pollution sources. In addition it is intended to positively
reinforce pro-environmental actions using a system of rewards and a virtual
character that will interact and motivate the users.

flona: Development of an Interface That Implements Lifelike Behaviors to a
Plant

In this paper, we propose the use of a plant as a new interface by
superimposing its static lifelike traits such as texture and growth, with
dynamic lifelike traits. In order to improve the affinity and to promote
smoother communication between a man and a robot, researchers have tried
raising lifelike traits by modeling a domestic robot's operation, form, and
texture on a living entity. A plant exists as a static entity having features
peculiar to living entity such as texture and growth. Although plant is a
living entity, it does not have the capability to move on its own unless living
entity compelled by external forces. Therefore, in this research, we give
lifelike behaviors to the plant by attaching an actuator to it.

Holes often excite our curiosity and eventually people will want to look
inside them. In this research, focusing the attention on this "hole
exploration" and corresponding actions as an element of interactive
entertainment, we developed a hole-type device named "HOJI*HOJI". HOJI*HOJI is
equipped with a hole that can recognize finger position through the use of
pressure sensors. Force feedback is also implemented within the device for
realizing interaction between the 'hole' and the user's finger. For proof of
concept, an interactive game application was made for HOJI*HOJI and was
exhibited at 2 events to confirm whether this 'hole' can attract people's
curiosity.

We present t-words an interface for children to playful explore sounds,
words and sentences while developing pre-literate skills. The interface
consists of rectangular blocks in which children can record and then play the
recorded audio. Additionally children can personalize the blocks by drawing on
their surface. Children can engage in different literacy related activities
such as building rhymes, playing with sounds and words as well as trying out
different combinations of sentences while engaging in storytelling. Since the
interface targets audio skills it may foster the development of phonological
awareness and sensitiveness, helping to promote children's early literacy.

We have developed a new Semi-Transparent Augmented Reality (AR) system that
displays the inner structures of objects by making their surface
semi-transparent. In this system we combine the live video of the object of
interest and 3D computer graphics (3DCG) models with appropriate transparency
and in proper order using AR technology. This system shows the 3DCG models of
inner structures as if they existed inside the object.

Internet live streaming services are now popular. Music live performances
are one of the best contents for live streaming. However, remote audience
cannot enjoy the performance as well as local audience due to the lack of
mutual awareness. In this paper, we define some challenging problems with
streaming services for music live performances, and give a basic system design
towards solving the problems.

We present an interface to allow for easy selection and creative control of
color changing lamp fixtures in the home, using the analogy of taking a
snapshot to select them. The user is presented with a GUI on their mobile phone
to control light attributes such as color, brightness, and scheduling and is
provided a means to specify a group of lights to be controlled at once. This is
achieved using an IR filter switcher on the phone to capture IR blobs pulsating
from inside the lamps and uses a central server to communicate between the two.
The system can operate under normal, indoor lighting conditions and is
concealed inside the lamps without any need to place fiducials or other
obscuring means of identification in the environment.

We present a new game system that provides both general knowledge and
regionally specific disaster risks in a fun and interesting way. Users can
experience disaster simulations on the go, as the game system detects the
user's position and movement using available GPS and acceleration sensors found
in most current Smartphones. This application is intended to increase the
user's knowledge and understanding of disaster risks while maintaining the
user's motivation to continue playing and learning.
An assessment experiment of the game was clearly beneficial to understand
Risk Perception and support the user's motivation of a muster drill.

According to data from Statistical Research on Shopping Centers (SC), the
number of SC in January 2012 was 3050, which is 1.41 times that of Y2000.
Despite gathering the impact on the custom absorbency power, there are some
spaces with a negative atmosphere where crowds of people gather together at the
same time in what could be considered as inactive dead spaces. In this paper,
we propose two entertainment systems which display animations by object
detection to improve these negative atmospheres of particularly large SCs. We
survey the changes in customer impressions by placing these systems in SC and
verify that these systems deliver better impressions on the spaces.

This special panel session provides an opportunity to discuss how
entertainment computing designers create interactive media/ contents on
Buddhism and also other religious practices. In this year, we have launched an
exciting project designing interactive contents to be used in Todaiji temple,
one of the world heritages located in Nara, Japan. In this project, we are
actually collaborating with monks of the Todaiji temple, learning Buddhist
rituals in this temple from the monks, and creating Augmented Reality contents
working on high performance network infrastructure. This session consists of a
presentation introducing our Todaiji temple project and a set of short key
notes from specialists; researchers on Augmented Reality, Entertainment
Computing, and Anthropology.

IUstream: Personal Live Streaming Support System with Automatic Collection
and Real-Time Recommendation of Topics

Nowadays, it becomes much easier to perform live streaming personally via
the Internet. When performers broadcast their programs, they sometimes have no
idea for what they should talk. In this paper, we propose a system, named
IUstream, to recommend one of proper topics which have been collected
automatically. As the result of an empirical evaluation, it is found that
IUstream can support performers.